Gossip (23 page)

I sat on the lobby sofa, prepared to wait all night if necessary with nothing to occupy me except my thoughts. I was afraid to go around the corner and buy a magazine for fear a pay phone might tempt me. My waiting began to feel less symbolic and more justified. What if I’d been right? Was Nancy okay? Now that I was here, what could I do for her? Call the police? Call the hospitals? I stewed in penitential helplessness.

Each time the door opened and someone climbed the short flight of stairs to the lobby, I hoped it would be her. It never was. I studied the elaborate mosaic floor and walls; I watched the doorman repeatedly disappear into a closet, where he presumably kept either cigarettes or a bottle.

I was alone in the lobby when the door opened again. Two flattened wings of frazzled hair mounted the steps, and a face with Edward Gorey eyes. She gazed forlornly in my direction, then stopped, squinting at me as if I were a migraine.

“A
ND HOW WAS SHE
?”

“Fine. Just fine. Unhappy but coping. And furious when she came in from spending the day at a Cineplex to find
me
parked in her lobby.”

Peter shook his head. “So you went down there for nothing?”

“Not quite for nothing. Her anger got her out of her funk. She was livid I’d come down. She attacked me for treating her as a good deed to purge my guilty conscience. I wanted to catch the next train back, but then she accused me of playing martyr, so I had to spend the night. We talked some, like we always talk, but I felt very, very stupid.”

“You’re such a guilt queen, Ralph. A regular Boy Scout of guilt. And you’re not even Jewish.”

“I just hate the idea of friends being angry at me. It made me go off the deep end.”

The sun was out Sunday morning, the unidentified trees across Cooper Square in dirty blooms of shredded tissue paper. Spring remained cold, but vendors were already setting out old clothes and magazines on the sidewalk. Nick had stopped off to get the Sunday paper; Peter and I had a few minutes alone in the coffee shop.

“What happened with her job?”

“Nothing for now. Kathleen is sympathetic but pragmatic. She told Nancy she wouldn’t let her go, for fear it suggested something
was
going on. She asked her to stay on for three months, then they’ll see where things stand. In the meantime—”

Nick came in with the bulky newspaper under his arm.

“Hey, Nick. How was Boston?”

“Don’t ask,” he grumbled as he took a seat.

Peter took the paper from him. “Seems like I was the only one who stayed put this weekend,” he said idly.

“Where did you go?” Nick asked me.

“Nowhere. Well, the Cloisters,” I quickly added. “Which is like going to Canada.”

The waitress brought our food—we’d ordered for Nick. Peter opened the paper while his lover blasted the conference.

“Two days of doctors telling us in state-of-the-art language that they still don’t know shit. And Boston. God I hate Boston. Old hippies and Harvard, with nothing in between.”

“Oh my God,” said Peter.

“Who now?” I asked.

He always went straight to the obituary page. His lantern jaw drew his closed mouth into a bud. He gingerly folded the section in half and passed it to me.

I saw the age first, which was how we read obits, looking for numbers under sixty. There was no photo. I saw the figure beside Peter’s thumb—“28”—before I saw the name: “William O’Connor, Author …”

“What is it?” said Nick.

My eyes raced through the first paragraphs:

William O’Connor Jr., a journalist whose work appeared in the
Wall Street Journal,
the
Washington Times
and
American Truths,
and whose controversial best-selling book,
The Regiment of Women,
was published this month, died in his home on Friday. He was 28.

According to Detective Larry Polk of the District of Columbia police, he was the victim of a homicide apparently committed in the course of a burglary.

“Oh
that,”
said Nick. “You didn’t hear about that?”

Peter laid a hand on my arm, then caught himself. “It’s just—Small world. Ralph and I saw this guy on
Nightline
only the other night. Huh,” he went, pretending it was just another oddity in the news.

“Was in the
Post
yesterday afternoon,” said Nick. “Leave it to the
Times
to bury it in the obits.”

I heard every word, but their voices came to me from miles away. Bill was dead? This was Bill, right?

“They think a hustler did it,” said Nick. “Convenient hustler, if you ask me. I missed his tantrum on
Nightline,
but I certainly heard about it.”

Someone I knew had been murdered. Yet I could not let Nick know that I knew him. It was a trivial consideration, but it forced me to show nothing while I tried to identify what I was feeling, if I felt anything.

Peter watched me, waiting for a signal that he could tell Nick the full story. He suddenly asked, “You think somebody had him killed?”

“The timing is too good to be accidental,” said Nick. “But it’s too good to be deliberate either. I can’t imagine any right-wingers thinking they had to clean house by killing a journalist. I mean, a journalist? Why bother? Something wrong, Ralph? You look like you’ve been hit with a two-by-four.”

Looking up, I found Nick watching me with a puzzled smile.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Somebody I saw on television. I don’t know why it should bother me. Just another death.” I took a bite of potatoes but my mouth was bone-dry.

“Oh God. Another damn article on Whitewater,” said Peter.

It took me a moment to understand that he was diverting Nick so that I could think in peace. But all I thought was: Words. Print. People accuse me of treating the printed word as the ultimate reality. Yet here in print was news about someone I knew, and it was as unbelievable as a bad novel. Unable to talk in front of Nick, my mind went blank while the enormous fact worked through my chest and spine.

Then Peter said good-bye to Nick and we started walking. Neither of us spoke until we turned the corner.

“You poor baby,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I said nothing, then, “Why sorry? He was no friend of mine. I hate him, remember.”

“Which must make it weirder. Unfinished business.”

I thought about that. “It does. But the weirdest part is how I felt something awful was happening this weekend. Which was why I went down.”

“You never saw him while you were there. Right?”

“No. I was with Nancy the whole time.” Then the meaning of his question caught up with me. “You wonder if
I
killed him?”

“No. I never thought that. Not you, Ralph.”

Someone had done a deed that I should have done? The thought passed as quickly as a blink.

“You’re sure you don’t want to tell Nick?” said Peter.

“Why? What could he do?”

“He might be able to make more sense of it. I know murder only from movies, but it does look strange.”

“I know only—it’s all strange. He’s dead? I can’t believe it. It’s so sudden. So—” I flipped my hand in the air.

“Out of nowhere,” said Peter. “I forgot what it’s like. Old-fashioned car wrecks and drownings. But it’s not just another death. You were wrong about that back there. It’s a murder, which feels, I don’t know, more human? Man-made. Meaningful.” He grimaced at his words. “New and exciting. I know that sounds callous, Ralph, but I never met him. He’s not real to me.”

But death had changed any reality Bill ever had for me.

We arrived at the store and I had to play manager. Going through my routines with a broken reality in my head was like being stoned. The good weather brought in more customers than usual for a Sunday morning. His book still sat on its bottom shelf, a stack of little brown grave markers.

My numbness released a few isolated thoughts, sentences that hung like fixed stars in my daze. He had it coming to him. Whoever did it had freed me from him. But I hated the killer more cleanly than I had ever hated him.

At lunch I went up the street to a newsstand that sold out-of-town papers. The
Washington Post
had the story on the front of their City section. I found a doorway where I could sit and learn a few facts and give shape to this rumor of death.

On Saturday morning, J. D. Weiss of Houston arrived at the apartment he kept in Washington and found it had been robbed. He discovered his tenant’s body in O’Connor’s, bedroom. The absence of any signs of forcible entry, and the body’s “state of undress,” suggested to the police that O’Connor had been killed and robbed by someone he’d brought home the night before. Weiss was quoted as saying, “He was gay, but new to that lifestyle and too trusting. He liked tough, dangerous men. A gifted young talent, his death is a sad loss to journalism.”

I read the article several times. There was one sentence I read only once. “Cause of death, according to the coroner’s report, was asphyxiation resulting from head injuries.”

When I returned to the store, I went to the back window and showed the article to Peter. “Oh God,” he said when he finished reading. “He was beaten to death? How awful.”

I nodded. “But Weiss says he was into rough trade. He wasn’t. He was white-bread through and through. Weiss is either talking off the top of his head or lying.”

“You think this guy Weiss did it?”

I remembered him on the boat, such a personable, jolly, short man. “No. But maybe he hired someone.”

“Would they go that far? Just because he came out?”

“I don’t know.” What made sense in a movie didn’t translate to life, but something was wrong with this story, something off.

“You going to tell the police what you know?”

“I don’t know much.”

“It might make you feel better.”

That was an odd way to put it, but Peter was right. I had to do something to make this real. I stepped into his cubbyhole to use his phone, needing him to see me make the call in order to make that real too.

I got an operator, then a woman in homicide, and finally Detective Larry Polk’s voice mail.

“My name is Ralph Eckhart. I live in New York City. I have some information regarding the murder of William O’Connor. I don’t know how useful it is. But I can be reached at …” I gave my work and home numbers, and hung up, feeling more blank than ever.

“There,” said Peter. “Nothing else we can do. You okay?”

I told him I was fine and went back to work.

My lack of strong, hard emotion did not alarm me. I knew firsthand the different ways grief can express itself. There’d been immediate tears over my downstairs neighbor, Martin, my first death since the grandmothers and aunts of childhood. The death of Eric Thomas, long after our hot-and-cold affair, had been like a kick in my chest. By the time Alberto died, however, after a year in and out of hospitals, months of home care, and two weeks of listening to his sandpaper breaths and the soft seethe of an oxygen line while I watched him gutter, fade and drown, I was so relieved by the end of his suffering and my helplessness that I felt no pain, no sorrow. Not until a month later when I unpacked his Mac and thought, Damn you, Bert, leaving me this when you know I hate machines. My old, tender exasperation with him gave way to a convulsion of sobs.

But I’d never hated those people. And murder was a different kind of death. Peter was right. This did mean more. Death was not yet private or metaphysical but unfinished, criminal, human.

Polk did not call me at work or that evening at home. Nor did Nancy. She had to have heard about Bill, but she never phoned. I refused to call her. I couldn’t after what she’d said to me on Friday night. “This has nothing to do with you, Ralph. It’s my crisis. Why do you insist on sharing it? Stay out of it. You want a crisis in your life, get your own. But don’t feel you have to make me part of yours.”

“M
R. RALPH ECKHART, PLEASE
.”

“Speaking.”

The call came Monday morning at the store.

“Robert Loveless. Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m calling in regards to William O’Connor. You knew him?”

“Yes. This is about his murder?”

“Yes.”
The brusque voice turned friendly when he found that I expected his call. “We’d like to talk with you. Hear what you can tell us about O’Connor’s life and friends.”

“Definitely. Where would you like to meet?”

“I could come uptown and see you at work. Or, if you prefer, you might drop by my office at Federal Plaza.”

The idea of the FBI visiting the store made me uneasy. “I’d rather come to you. Except I don’t get off until six.”

“There’s no rush. Whatever’s most convenient.”

He told me the floor and said to give his name to the receptionist. “We appreciate you taking the time to come in, Mr. Eckhart. It makes our job that much easier.”

I hung up with nothing worse than a case of butterflies over a blind date. As with any blind date, I doubted anything would come of this. After my neurotic rescue mission I had no faith in my actions, yet was relieved to do something with my—I still couldn’t call it grief. It remained a numb state of disbelief.

The Federal Plaza Building was off Foley Square, downtown near City Hall, a tall, white, concrete box perforated like a cheese grater. The mammoth courthouse with its blackened Roman facade and endless stairs crouched across the street. Riding up in the elevator, I felt improperly dressed in my duffel coat, as if this were only a job interview. My strongest emotion was dry curiosity, a grim satisfaction over this chance to peer inside an institution that none of my crowd knew firsthand. I doubted the value of the knowledge I brought, but hoped to learn more about Bill’s death. I still believed in knowledge for its own sake.

The elevator opened into bare fluorescent space. There were no chairs or plants, only a white marble floor and beige walls. The bureau seal hung between a thick glass window like a ticket booth and a simple wood-veneered door. I asked the man in the window for Agent Loveless, stepped back and waited, remembering again some lines from a Delmore Schwartz poem about love not being just and justice being loveless.